


by and down the river

by spacewitchescantdie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captivity, Drugs, Dubious Consent, Electrocution, F/F, Hate Sex, Interrogation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-27 09:30:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15682674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacewitchescantdie/pseuds/spacewitchescantdie
Summary: Hera had planned for imprisonment. She hadn't planned for Arihnda Pryce.





	by and down the river

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiriamKenneath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/gifts).



> Showing only bits and pieces  
> 'Til the tide betrays you and your empty allocution  
> Float the Piper _by and down the river_  
>  Carcass crippled underneath the pounding waves of adoration  
> — "By and Down the River", A Perfect Circle
> 
> Red lips, a sinister tongue  
> (I'll taste you until I can't)  
> Our trip has just begun  
> (I'll fly with you til the end)  
> Psychotic voice  
> (You are in my veins now)  
> — "Sexual Hallucination", In This Moment

Hera is floating.

If she stretches her arms out her fingertips don't quite touch the transparisteel wall of her test-tube cage; her toes don't quite touch the ground no matter how hard she tries. If she tips her head back as far as she can - far enough that her head lands against the back wall with a thud - she can't see a ceiling.

Lothal is fallen, and Hera has been floating for what feels like as long as she can remember.

Outside the glass, the governor sits with her back to the cage, eyes fixed on the reflective surface of the metal in her hands. If Hera cranes her neck to see as well, she knows, she wouldn't see her own face. Just her body, pale green and growing paler as her captivity waxes onwards, hovering over Pryce's shoulder like a trophy.

She doesn't like moving much, though. She learned early on that too much movement makes the suspension she's caught in run in unpleasant ripples over her skin until it gets in her ears and mouth where it pools in slimy beads that she has to shake out whenever Pryce decides to drag her out into the open air where she can speak.

Worst of all is when she does manage to touch the walls or floor, the currents of electricity far stronger than any interrogation droid could ever muster that bend her nearly in half with the shocks of pain.

It's not entirely without its uses, though, Hera has found. It keeps her awake, keeps her angry, and if she screams loud enough, it usually brings Pryce coming to watch, if she's within the Imperial complex.

Sometimes Pryce comes to gloat. Sometimes she brings drugs, ones that loosen Hera's limbs and tongue until she resorts to begging for everything to stop, pleas to cover her growing fear that she won't be able to keep silent about the Rebellion for much longer. Sometimes she opens the cell with a control Hera still hasn't managed to grab, and the physical tedium of captivity gives way to a dizzying sort of pain as Pryce bends and rearranges her body into shapes not more bearable than the frozen vertical of the cage but still nearly pleasurable in their difference.

Other days she seems to simply want to watch, eyes deep as the space between stars trying to burrow holes into Hera's skin. Hera prefers that to the liminal unreality of days like today, their twinned piecemeal reflections like people of their own, ones she can't touch or hear but that dance to Pryce's whims anyway as she tilts the mirrors fragments back and forth.

"What are you waiting for?" Her voice in suspension is muffled, thick like she's speaking from under kilometers of water rather than less than a foot of whatever Pryce has had her in for too vague of a time to count.

Funny, how rapidly her world has narrowed, how little she misses what she left behind. In the beginning she had, but the absences have faded as her wounds closed, everything filled or replaced with the need to keep the Rebellion's secrets well.

She hadn't, necessarily, planned to survive the ending of this mission. She hadn't planned on Pryce, either, but she was nothing if not adaptable.

It was, perhaps, all she had left, the complacency of Pryce's silent study as if the time she left Hera alone to plan wasn't a gift.

"You're not usually quiet two days in a row," Hera continues, and smiles to herself as she can see Pryce flinch.

"And you're not usually talkative at all," Pryce says. Hera can't see her face, not without turning her own head, but she knows what Pryce looks like when her irritation isn't quite covering her fear, knows the lines of her forehead and the twist of her lips.

It's a nice image to recall when she can, a nice image to play with during the long bouts of her captor's abscence. Pryce in a loth-wolf's jaws, limp and bloody with no Jedi to spare her, flesh dangling from her body in ribbons like obscene variants of lekku.

Pryce in Hera's place, feet flat against the floor, body shivering uncontrollably with the current, fingertips blackened with burns and still reaching out

Arihnda, on better days, naked and spread on the cold durasteel of some nameless base's floor, lips closed around the barrel of Hera's blaster -

Hera shakes her head, wincing as the suspension crawls over her skin. Her imagination isn't usually so violent, or so vivid - _Pryce, pressed up against the glass with an interrogation droid perched on her shoulder and an electrowhip in hand_ \- and she wonders, for the first time, how easy it would be to give in to some of the images, to finally snap and make someone else hurt.

"Ah," Pryce gets up slowly, almost carelessly, if such a thing could be said about an Imperial. "You've noticed, then."

It wouldn't help her get out, would probably only hasten her death. But, kriff, it would be so _satisfying_ in the moment. She's held back for so long.

"Special treatment, huh?" Hera licks her lips, tastes the salt of sweat and the sharp tang of the electricity that clings to everything these days, not enough to hide a new, cloying sweetness. "What did you drug me with?"

Pryce shrugs, studiously examining a point slightly to the left of Hera's ear, as if she wasn't even worth looking at. It's _infuriating_. "Nothing much," she says, and truthfully Hera hadn't expected even that in answer. "But it might make your stay here a little more pleasant, for the both of us."

Hera shudders, remembering the last time Pryce had talked of pleasure - _Hera shackled from the ceiling, Pryce pressed metal-hot against her back, the whole of the city sprawled out beyond the windows in the sky_ \- and lets her head loll back.

Pliant.

Waiting.

"I don't think we have compatible ideas of _pleasure_ , Governor."

Pryce raises an eyebrow. "Are you saying your dreams give you no delight, General Syndulla? What sad little lives you Rebellion rats lead." The mockery in her voice can't disguise the hint of genuine curiosity.

Hera opens her mouth to respond, but before she can, Pryce brushes her fingers over one of the controls studded into her belt and the front panel of the cage swings open. Hera falls in a wave of liquid, feels it congeal on her skin sticky-hot under the newly high gravity, but can't lift a hand to do anything about it as her limbs splay limply across the durasteel, shoulders and hips throbbing with the force of the impact.

Pryce kneels at her side, oddly gentle as she strokes a hand down one of Hera's lekku. Hera endures the intimacy in silence, languid limbs unwilling to fully protest even as she halfheartedly squirms away. "You like your fantasies," Pryce murmurs. "Remember the first day, when you thought you saw your Jedi outside?"

She had seen Kanan, before she had signalled him to _leave, leave and don't come back for me,_ but she doesn't tell Pryce that. Better for everyone if Pryce believes him far away.

Better for Hera, if she can believe him and the Rebellion alive.

"He's not here now," she says, and can't stop the pleased smirk pulling at her lips as Prcye's eyes darken. "None of them are. Or else you'd be dead by now."

"I very much doubt that." Hera sees the electrowhip too late to do anything but get her hands in front of her face, and she realises her mistake as it coils around her wrists, binding them tightly together. "Good little rebel," Pryce murmurs, getting to her feet, and Hera groans at the ache in her core as she's dragged along with. "You know what I think? I think you're glad I'm here with you."

Hera bares her teeth, unwilling to give Pryce the satisfaction of letting her know she's right. Better Pryce, with her impersonal hurts than - _clean implements of torture abandoned because her lips are pressed against Hera's, eyes shut in mingled horror and pleasure as Hera's hand dips between her legs and squeezes, nails against cloth against skin as she drags her hand upwards to Pryce's belt, her blaster_ -

\- better Pryce than -

When Hera comes back to herself she's strapped down to Pryce's favourite table, naked but for the intricate patterns the finely linked chains are burning across her arms and stomach. Pryce lounges nearby, smiling as she surveys her handiwork.

Hers, or maybe that of the interrogation droid floating nearby, audio recording light blinking placidly.

"Should've told me you were bringing friends," Hera says, fighting down a surge of panic. "I would've dressed up for them."

Pryce hums, unpreturbed. "No," she says, eyes lingering on Hera's breasts, "I think you're exactly as dressed as you need to be, for this."

Hera bites her lip, tentatively flexing her wrists to see how securely she's tied down, and the answering shock of electricity is strong enough that her back arches off the table as it ripples up her arms and down her spine. She shivers with the aftershocks as Pryce laughs.

"That's the lowest setting," she says, tapping her belt. "So unless being burnt to a crisp is something you enjoy - and I hope you believe me when I say I would prefer if it isn't - I would advise you not to move."

"I've never known you to start simple," Hera manages through gritted teeth. "Why the special treatment today?"

Pryce gives her a look of genuine confusion. "You've always been special," she says, and it's so out of place that Hera can only stare, mind gone completely blank _except for the sensation of Pryce's hands on her breasts, nails sharp and hot as they pinch at her nipples, pain needle-perfect lancing through her, until it's soothed by Pyrce's mouth, the flat of her tongue laving over the bruises and piercings as she murmurs praise, my General, so obedient, and Hera arches into the touch even though some part of her thinks it can't be real, something's off_ -

The shock of the electrowhip slams her back into her body and she whimpers helplessly, tears pricking the corner of her eyes as she watches the blurry figure of Pryce tapping the whips's hilt against her thigh.

"Maybe I dosed you too thoroughly," she muses. "This isn't helpful if you keep slipping away, Syndulla."

"You're - you're not nicer in the dreams you're giving me," Hera says with difficulty. Her mouth is dry, her tongue fuzzy, and she wishes that whatever Pryce was planning would just happen already.

In interrogations, as in smuggling, it was always the waiting that was the worst part.

"Giving you?" Pryce stands up, stalks closer, closer, and Hera's eyes can't leave the hypnotic sway of the rippling, sparking whip at her side. "I'm not giving you anything, much less dreams. The drug simply magnifies what you're already wishing for. Makes it easier for you to ignore what's right in front of you."

What she wants. But she doesn't want this, does she, does she want _Pryce's mouth on her nipples replaced with cold steel clamps, colder than they should have been, connected to the chains as they were. When Hera glances down her body she can see the electrical burns starting to form on her skin, and for a moment all she can smell is the awful scent of her flesh on fire, and then there's a shift, a darkness, Pryce above her with her knees just brushing her lekku, lowering her bare cunt to Hera's mouth and Hera's biting down on_ \- nothing, except the gag Pryce is attempting to shove into her mouth.

"You're lying," she says, or tries to, but her teeth graze Pryce's fingertips as she pulls her hand and the leather gag back, and that's almost good enough.

"Am I?" Pryce arches an eyebrow. "I wonder, what could you be seeing to inspire such denial?"

Hera glares, wondering if Pryce really didn't know. What she would do if she knew.

"What if I guessed?" She's close enough that she can run the electrowhip's tip down the valley between Hera's breasts, and Hera doesn't have to look down to know that she's flushed deep and dark from far more than the electricity. The whip tickles at her skin as Pryce expertly threads it over and around the chains, and Hera squirms, feeling the residual energy from the chains fizzle across her skin.

"You wouldn't," Hera says, with what little confidence she can muster. "You haven't gotten anything else from me yet." But even as she speaks, she can hear the shakiness of her voice expose her for a liar.

"I think we should play a game," Pryce says, and Hera's gratified to hear her voice tremble too. "If I win, I get to learn something else about you. If you win ..." The whip slips down her stomach, comes to rest coiled on her hairless mound, almost vibrating with a mind of its own. "Then even someone like you deserves a reward."

The combination of heat and drugs is edging towards overwhelming. Hera feels like she's back in the cage, clawing herself upwards out of the congealed slick. Pryce's gaze, too, is hot, and it burns across Hera like _errant blaster fire on a battlefield, like the time four or five sleep cycles ago when Pryce tilted the table to vertical and placed it and Hera in the centre of a blaster target on the wall, adrenaline pounding in her wrists and the tips of her lekku, arousal slicking her cunt so thoroughly she was sure Pryce noticed even though she didn't say anything at all, and she would be lying if she said it only stared now_ -

Pryce's hand cracks across her face, stunning in both the strength of its impact and its intimacy. She's never hit her like this before, skin on skin, and Hera bites her lip on a groan and tastes the blood rising in her mouth. She's getting to used to the feeling of Pryce's hands on her body, and can't even tell if she minds.

Hera tries to bring her hand up to wipe away the blood, and realises too late that she's chained to a table, not _sitting on Pryce's thighs, one hand four fingers deep in her cunt and the other clawing marks across her throat, marks that bloom angry-red and full of blood, so much blood_ -

"Fuck," she whispers as the shock fades from her bones, as Pryce fades in and out of focus in front of her. "This is what you did. It's your own fault you don't have me. That I like dreaming instead."

"Dreams indeed," Pryce says slowly. "I wonder which of them I'll pull from you today. Remember our deal?" 

She's close, so close that when Hera nods resentfully, their foreheads nearly touch. "Well then," she continues, "I think that you're fantasising about your little rat friends. About saving them, once you break out of here. General Syndulla, liberator of Lothal."

Hera's cheeks burn with shame. She'd thought about that many times during the first days of her captivity, had planned and never quite executed dozens of escapes. But now, with Pryce's drug in her veins, all she can think of is her, about the way _General Syndulla_ sounds in her mouth.

But her failure is her paradoxical victory, and Hera can't help the brief flicker of satisfaction that runs through her as she says, "Wrong."

Pryce, however, looks feral and more than pleased as she flicks her wrist so the hilt of the whip nudges against Hera's slit. _A reward_ , she had said, and Hera had never even guessed. Still doesn't know if she regrets.

"Well," Pryce says, when Hera remains quiet. "I'm sure we'll find out soon if that's a shame."

When the hilt slips inside her, Hera screams for the first time all day.


End file.
